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About the maker

Hosho Sadaoki貞興

Sadaoki is a smith of the Yamato Hosho group, resident in Takaichi District of Yamato and working at the close of the Kamakura period. The swordbooks place him around the Gentoku era and record him variously as a son of Sadamune in the line of Sadayoshi or as a son of Sadakiyo; with Sadayoshi, Sadakiyo and Sadamitsu he shares the character Sada as the group's common name element. The Hosho stood apart from the rest of Yamato by the openness of its individuality, and the published sources name it so: among the five Yamato traditions its workmanship is "the most markedly distinctive" (大和五派の中で最も特色が顕著で). What they distinguish is a school built whole on an orderly *masame* forging, a *nie*-laden *suguha* that frays as it goes, a *boshi* that finishes bluntly, and a tang filed *higaki*. Sadaoki is one of the hands through whom that manner is read in full. His is, first, the *jigane*. Across every blade the published record describes a *masame-hada*, well ordered and tightly forged, at times taking on a flowing tendency, with fine *ji-nie* adhering and *chikei* entering; on the closer-grained tanto a *nie-utsuri* stands toward the mune. The grain is the constant and the tell, the orderly *masame* that the sources hold up as the Hosho hallmark. Over it the temper stays comparatively quiet, a *suguha* deep in *nioi* with *ko-nie* well adhered and the *nioiguchi* clear. The line is not left plain. It intertwines with the grain and frequently breaks into *hotsure*, gathering *uchi-noke*, *nijuba* and *kuichigai-ba* along the *habuchi*, with *kinsuji* and *sunagashi* running through and the temper carried down into the *machi*. This is activity belonging to the *masame* *jigane* rather than to the clove clusters of a Bizen edge. The *boshi* completes the signature. On every recorded blade it runs straight, vigorously *hakikake*, and finishes in a *yakizume* sweep, on some tanto turning back in a small *ko-maru* on the omote before it ends. The published sources, citing the *Koji-kiron* on the Hosho Goro manner, put the whole hand in a single line: "the *masame* forging is made to stand out conspicuously, the *boshi* is bluntly finished in *yakizume*, and nothing is concealed" (柾目鍛も目に立ててあらはし、帽子すげなく焼詰め、かくれはなし). The school's customary animation is also noted, that from the *monouchi* upward "the *yakiba* grows broader and the *nie* adheres with greater strength" (物打辺から上が焼巾が広くなり一段と沸がつよくつく); Sadaoki's surviving tanto tend toward the calmer end of that range. His record divides between two forms. The body of it is the signed *hira-zukuri* tanto, small in stature and slender to standard in width with a notably thick *kasane* and the inward *uchizori* of old Yamato work, the tang *ubu* and filed *higaki*, signed in two characters, in the four-character Fujiwara Sadaoki, or in a full long signature. Against these stands the rare *o-suriage* mumei tachi attributed to him, slender and shortened, the *masame* well ordered, the temper a *chu-suguha* tone mixed with *gunome* and broken by *hotsure*, *nijuba*, *kuichigai-ba* and *muneyaki*. The published sources stress how few such tachi survive: of Sadaoki "examples in the form of tachi are extremely rare" (太刀の作例は極めて稀). No extant work of his bears a date, and the sources revise the conventional placement, observing that the swordbooks' dating to the Joji era, judged from the surviving work, "feels somewhat too late" (貞治とあるのはやや物の上から鑑ては時代を下げすぎている). What sets Sadaoki within his own school is read by build and by the calm of his hand rather than by any single personal tell, the group's smiths showing no sharply differentiated individuality. The published commentary draws the line carefully: Sadayoshi's *masame* runs coarser with stronger *nie*, while the slightly later Hosho hands grow gentler and cleaner in both *ji* and *ha*. It is on exactly this basis that one mumei tanto is given to him, the judges reasoning that "from its small-scale construction, an attribution to Sadaoki is considered appropriate" (小振りの造込みより、貞興の極めが妥当と思われる). His small, refined, thick-kasane tanto are the standard against which the comparison is drawn, the quiet and clean end of the Hosho line. For the collector Sadaoki is a scarce late-Kamakura name whose record runs through a small number of pieces rather than through the top designations. He has no National Treasures and no Important Cultural Properties; his standing rests on a handful of works in the Tokubetsu Juyo and Juyo tiers, seven of them on record here, three carried to the Tokubetsu Juyo rank. The finest is the Tokubetsu Juyo signed tanto whose *ji* and *ha*, in the words of the published sources, leave nothing to be desired in showing the whole Hosho group, sound and exceptionally well preserved, the more valued for being *ubu* and signed. A signed tachi survives with its gold *nashiji* chrysanthemum-and-paulownia *itomaki* mounting, and two of the tachi are published in the *Kozan Oshigata*. None of these blades carries a recorded current holder, and provenance for the group is thin, so a Sadaoki is encountered seldom; a signed example, and a tachi above all, is a rare thing for a private collector to meet, and a clear document of the Hosho manner when it does appear.

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